By ART THIEL, P-I COLUMNIST

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, February 17, 2008

Please tell your Sonics-loving friends to get back off the Aurora Bridge rail. The weather is way too nice to think of a suicidal dip over another incremental blip.

NBA Commissioner David Stern allegedly dropped a bomb on Seattle's pro basketball future Saturday with his stated belief that a move to Oklahoma City is now a question of when, not if.

Felt like a firecracker to me. Maybe a sparkler.

Not saying he won't be proven correct at some point, but there is a long way to go on this story. To wear oneself out by going Chicken Little right now only makes Colonel Sanders happy.

Looking all glum, adopting his cloying, passive/aggressive stance on Seattle's lack of arena public funding so far -- "that's everyone's right; I mean that sincerely" -- Stern dismissed any chance of the Sonics staying beyond the expiration of their lease after 2010.

"I see nothing," Stern said. "I don't know why anyone would expect, in the absence of (a change) in what they've been saying all along ... that funding for a new building of some kind and a plan for it, that they would be staying. I accept that inevitability at this point. There is no miracle here."

Miracle?

Who requested a miracle?

If we're ordering up miracles, let me put in my request -- that the NBA and its players union come up with a collective bargaining agreement that would control salaries sufficient to make tickets affordable and not force municipalities to have to redo their NBA buildings every decade or so.

That would be a miracle.

Absent that, the answer to the five-year-long saga is not a miracle but a cost-benefit analysis of the virtue of a convention center/arena that would house many other events, including the NBA. There is also a possibility that KeyArena could be salvaged, but the extreme makeover required is vulnerable to political sabotage by all the constituencies that use Seattle Center.

Either way, that play is down the road, and Stern knows it.

Stern also knows that, as with every major league sports commissioner, he works for the owners, one of whom is bleeding big red.

Feel free to vent at Stern, but he did exactly what commissioners are supposed to do -- put his foot on Seattle's throat. That's how Boeing does it. That's how Microsoft does it. That's how Paul Allen does it.

Monopoly operators have big feet, and they put them down hard.

Was there an expectation that Stern would say things are swell in a city suing one of the lodge brothers?

Was there an expectation that Bennett would not make a lowball offer to the city to settle before trial begins June 16?

Was there an expectation that Stern would do anything other than help create crisis in Seattle?

He seemed clever in making the offer of $26.5 million that was claimed to cover two years of lost revenue as well as the principal balance of the 1995 KeyArena construction debt. With interest, that cost balloons to nearly $50 million if the bonds are retired on schedule in 2015.

Frankly, that was the minimum that should have been offered.

The building works well for pro basketball. It just hasn't worked for pro basketball's economics. Given that operational losses for three years in Seattle are projected at more than $60 million, Bennett and Stern should have doubled the offer just to make it more difficult politically to turn down.

Instead, the offer had a one-day life span, until 5 p.m. Friday, a limit no municipal litigant would accept. It was timed so that Stern could break the news to a national audience at the All-Star Game in New Orleans, presumably adding pressure on Seattle. The whole thing had the sincerity of a Shaquille O'Neal free-throw attempt.

Stern accepts as fact that the building must be publicly funded, conveniently ignoring what happened with four other major Western cities.

Something like that needs to happen here. Many wealthy local barons have been in that conversation. They see no reason to announce themselves until Bennett loses his court case.

What seems certain is that, if there is to be public money in the project, it won't go to the current owner. Bennett has soiled the sheets here, and few would be willing to get in bed with him.

Once Bennett is guaranteed to face two more years of losses like this season, his resistance to a sale diminishes, particularly if he can buy with the proceeds the New Orleans Hornets, who now have an attendance escape clause in their lease after next season.

Yes, that adds up to a lot of developments that must work together. The odds don't seem good. But remember -- when you're already out on the bridge rail, don't take direction from the guy trying to make a splash.